Try That In National Review

They won't stop you

Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review calls herself K-Lo. She wishes Jason Aldean would play nice and not record songs like Try That In A Small Town. Liberals are upset that Aldean’s video reminds people of the mostly violent protests libs staged in 2020 over the drug-overdose death of a fentanyl peddler named George Floyd. So she said it was not helpful of Aldean to point out the senseless Knock Out game that has youths sucker-punching old people.

She objects to the video showing violence.

Conservatives object to the violence shown in the video.

K-Lo wrote, “Part of the reason some conservatives are defending the song is that there is plenty of other music that is violent that doesn’t get pulled by anyone. The healthy answer isn’t to add more anger and violence. Some of us are old enough to remember former second lady Tipper Gore, a Democrat, and former secretary of education William J. Bennett, a Republican, warning us about sex and violence in music and video games. They were right. And it’s only gotten worse since then. No small part of the reason that young people find themselves getting abortions is that the music they listen to insists that aggressive sexuality is the only way to have a relationship with someone of the opposite sex. Then if they are not having sex, TikTok videos tell them the solution to their normal middle-school awkwardness is puberty blockers and surgery. Our culture adds cruelty to life that is already challenging.”

I am not really sure how a song that condemns urban violence connects to TikTok, abortion, and transgendering but she is agreeing with Tipper Gore, which is always a sign that a writer works for National Review.

K-Lo wonders why can’t Aldean write nice songs about small town like that nice John Mellencamp who wrote a nice song called Small Town that he recorded in 1985. It goes something like this:

Well, I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town
Probably die in a small town
Oh, those small communities

All my friends are so small town
My parents live in the same small town
My job is so small town
Provides little opportunity, hey

Educated in a small town
Taught to fear of Jesus in a small town
Used to daydream in that small town
Another boring romantic, that’s me

K-Lo ended her column, “I’m pretty sure John Mellencamp and I have different politics. Indeed, Googling, I see that he describes himself as a socialist. But I am grateful to that socialist for inserting some gratitude into our culture in an aspirational way. And I hope that Republican Aldean in future songs can find himself encouraging people toward the good, rather than adding anger and violence, which are already a plague of our time.”

Instead of confronting the urban violence that is turning our country into a war-torn hellhole, we should all sing nice Kumbaya songs.

Jason Aldean has already been there and done that. His first single was a hit called Hicktown in 2005. He sang:

Little Jimmy Jackson is jackin’ up his Bronco.
He's gonna lay a little rubber later on at the truck pull.
An’ all the girls are getting pretty... they’re sprayin’ on the White Rain.
Yeah, they’re gonna get a rowdy tonight down at the football game.

Yeah, we let it rip when we got the money...
Let it roll if we got the gas.
It gets wild, yeah, but that's the way we get down,
In a Hicktown.

Well, you can see the neighbors butt crack nailing on his shingles,
An’ his woman’s smokin’ Pall Mall's watchin’ Laura Ingalls.
An’ Granny's getting lit, she's headin’ out to bingo.
Yeah, my buddies an’ me are goin’ muddin’ down on Blue Hole Road.

Nice.

I know of what he sang. I do not partake. I have had an ATV in my garage for three years now, but I have never gone mudding. It looks like fun. I understand the virtues of living in a small town of less than 1,200 people. There are downsides too. Having grown up in Cleveland, I know the good and the bad of big city life. My wife and I have lived in Poca, West Virginia, for 35 years now.

K-Lo’s call for singing about virtue and not violence is dime-store National Review virtue signaling. The liberals-have-a-point mentality of its writers do the opposite of enhancing their argument because I always wonder when they will admit conservatives have a point too.

And we do. The point of Aldean’s song is that no one is standing up to the rioters and the looters. Someone should.

Matt Walsh defended Aldean on Twitter, tweeting, “Hilarious to hear the media accuse Jason Aldean of writing a song that ‘promotes violence’ when nearly every rap song for the past 30 years has directly and enthusiastically glorified murder, drug dealing, robbery and every other violent crime, and these people say nothing.”

And Walsh tweeted, “One of the top rap videos on YouTube is called Robberies by King Von and it's all about him robbing and killing people. The rapper was recently killed in a gang shooting. Before his death he was implicated in multiple murders and other crimes. But Jason Aldean is the problem.”

This is not Whataboutism because there is a major difference between Aldean’s warning and the rap promoters of violence. Robbie Ettelson compiled, “The 25 Most Violent Rap Songs of All Time.” I am sure those songs inspired many a thug. I also am sure Walsh has heard a few of those tunes.

He said, “In your typical rap song, violence is advocated against anybody and everybody, not for the sake of defending yourself or your community, but for the sake of profit or selling, settling a score with someone from a rival gang or proving how tough you are, etc. You know, if a rap song mentions carjacking people at red lights or pulling guns on liquor store owners it’ll be because the artist is bragging about doing those things.”

“Aldean condemns those crimes. Rap artists explicitly promote and glorify them. So why does Aldean get held to a standard that is never applied to the most popular rap artists in the world?”

We know why. Liberals demand perfection from conservatives.

K-Lo demands perfection from conservatives.

I am not saying she is a liberal, but by demanding Aldean be like that nice liberal John Mellencamp, she sure increased her odds.

Instead of knocking Aldean, real true conservatives embrace him. We want the violence to end. We want the Knock Out game to end. We want thugs locked up.

We want rappers to quit promoting violence — the very thing she and the rest of the commentariat falsely accuse Aldean of doing.

It is easy to take potshots at someone liberals have attacked. It takes true courage to defend not only Aldean’s right to free speech but what he is saying. Aldean wants to end urban violence. K-Lo just wants to please her oppressors on the left.

We don’t care about their feelings. DC Draino tweeted, “We only started winning the culture war when we fought back.

“I’ve said for years now — I’m not against cancel culture.

“I think we should hit them back so hard that they beg for a truce.

“Now Bud Light and Target are shells of their former selves.

“Peace through superior firepower.”

This is not just about winning. This is about survival. Once again, the choice is simple and once again, National Review made the wrong choice.